March 31, 2008

If you’re not familiar with Gail Gaymer Martin’s fiction and blog, you’re missing out. For a thorough course in character development, I hope you’ll check out her recent blog posts. Print them out and you have an entire course on creating characters.

Here are some posts you won’t want to miss from her blog:

• Jan. 18–Birthing Realistic Characters
• Jan. 21–Defining Characters
• Jan. 24–Backstory and How to Use It Effectively
• Jan. 28–Characters’ Personalities and Names
• Jan. 31–Developing Characters’ Appearance
• Feb. 3–Dressing Characters
• Feb. 6–Characters and Their Mannerisms
• Feb. 10–Vocal Qualities and Characterization
• Feb. 13–Characters and Talking Without Words

March 29, 2008

After returning from the Mt. Hermon writing conference I had so many notes and hand-outs and worksheets dealing with marketing that I was overwhelmed. (Can you have “marketing block”?) I didn’t know where to start, even though I’ve had a website for years and a blog for months. I had collected terrific ideas on branding, making book trailers, blogging, writing a newsletter, collecting addresses, multiple ways to reach your publisher’s sales force with material that would actually help them sell your books, tips on upping sales on Amazon.com, making e-books, and much more. As I sorted through the material when I got home, I could feel my blood pressure rising. Where to begin? How to prioritize? How to do it all on a shoestring budget (and a short shoestring at that)?

I developed marketing ADD. When I was setting up my second website Girls Connecting with God and What’s a Girl To Do? blog, I suddenly remembered that I should be registering another domain name and submitting an article to a writer’s website and turning a manuscript into an e-book to sell. Flipping through notebooks and books and scribbled pages for the information, I wanted to burn it all instead. I didn’t sign up for this! All I wanted to ever do was sit in a quiet room and make up stories and write them down. That’s all. And now to add to writer’s block, I had marketing block.

Is there a solution? Yes, and I think I found it. It’s a two-pronged approach. It has to do with scheduling and organization. I bought a three-ring binder and dividers with eight colored tabs, and labeled the tabs according to the types of marketing I needed to do. I have tabs that say things like “website work” and “blog work” and “Amazon.com” and “sales and marketing” and “selling online.” In the front of each section is a “to do” list for that section, followed by the information I need to do it. The other prong–scheduling–comes into play on my daily/weekly calendar. I have a couple hours at the end of the day when my brain is tired that is blocked off for marketing. At the beginning of the week, I plan to read each “to do” list in the marketing binder and see what is most pressing, then prioritize it, and stick it on my daily calendar.

As I organized and scheduled various tasks, I could feel the marketing block melting away. My approach is to work on the projects a bit at a time, in a regular manner. To be honest, I’d rather not have to market. I’d rather be writing all day long. But expectations of authors have changed, and in the end, I may feel that it’s a good change. Writers have griped for decades about having no control over how much time and energy is being spent marketing their books. Through personal marketing in a variety of venues, we can now make a difference. And–if my method works–we can do it without driving ourselves nuts.

March 28, 2008

Lately I’ve felt overwhelmed when I looked at the various writing projects sitting on my desk. Given a choice, I’m a one-project-at-a-time gal. But right now, I’m in the middle of a nonfiction teen book requested by an editor (yeah!), a series proposal which needs sample chapters written, a serious middle grade novel that needs revision, and a lot of marketing ideas for my websites. I had “Mexican jumping bean mind” and couldn’t seem to stick with any project, but bounced from one thing to another.

So I looked for answers in the “Morning Nudges” I’d saved for several weeks. And I found it! (I’ve mentioned this free bit of encouragement before. At the Working Writer’s Coach, you can sign up for Suzanne Lieurance’s free e-book, Get Your Freelance Writing Career Off the Ground. When you sign up for the e-book, you also receive her daily “Morning Nudge” in your inbox.) When I re-read the one below, I knew I’d hit pay dirt. Several weeks ago, Suzanne had written:

People always ask me why I’m not stressed out over all the things I have to do every day. My answer is simple. I schedule everything. Once something is on my schedule, I don’t think about it any more until the scheduled time for it. That way, I’m able to relax and focus on just one thing at a time. I also avoid guilty feelings when I’m enjoying myself because I schedule leisure activities into each day as well as work. Scheduling is very powerful. Try it!

So that’s what I did this morning before starting work on anything. I sorted notebooks and papers into four project piles. Then I tackled one pile at a time, in order of priorities. (A requested book manuscript always takes priority with me.) With calendar and daily planner in hand, I mapped out deadlines, then broke all the projects down into very manageable sizes. I discovered this week that I can work 90 minutes at a time at the computer before getting neck pain and headaches. So while making the schedule, I penciled in breaks after each 90-minute working segment. (For me, it has to be get-away-from-the-computer time, both to rest my eyes and to exercise my back and neck. Example: this morning’s breaks were spent weeding a flower bed and walking.) I came back refreshed, and with my brain ready to switch gears and focus on the next project. Part of the walking/weeding time was spent thinking about the next project and mentally shifting gears.

Suzanne said scheduling was powerful. So far, I have to agree. Powerful and productive both. I like being able to focus on one thing at a time, knowing the other projects will get their turn in due time. I’m all in favor of anything that helps me focus!

March 26, 2008

Day Three of working like a Nine-to-Fiver is nearly over. I have to admit that I’ve accomplished more writing and writing-related work in the last three days than in many weeks in the past. I was pondering that this morning as I whipped around the kitchen while my water heated in the microwave. Usually while my water heats for my early morning hot chocolate, I stare out the window at the park. I think about big issues: what to thaw out for supper, wondering if the pain in my hip would get better or worse if I walked again, wondering what that pink sticky stuff is on the counter… But since I made the decision to be ready to work in my office at 8:30 when my husband walks out the door, there’s no time for such ruminating. So instead I unloaded the dishwasher, loaded half of it, and laid out my running clothes while the water heated.

It has been embarrassingly easy to “speed up” in the morning and throughout the day. Why embarrassing? Because, like many empty nesters my age, I’ve bemoaned the fact for years to anyone who would listen that “I just don’t move as fast as I used to.” I knew, as everyone else did, that it was a common by-product of aging. And yet, I found out this week that it apparently was all in my mind. How did that belief come to be set in concrete like that?

I think somewhere along the line my belief changed from “I don’t move as fast as I used to” to “I can’t move as fast as I used to.” I had come to accept slowness as part of my work life. And slowness meant lots of long breaks, naps and walks, less writing, less energy for research trips, and fewer attempts to sell things with proposals (”I might be too tired to write that series if it sells!”)

Speeding up and acting like a nine-to-fiver has had some unexpected benefits. I did expect to get lots more work done–and I have. But I’ve also enjoyed it a lot more. When you work for concentrated periods of time, you get in the “flow” and stay there a lot longer. Also, my evenings are my own now. I can now sit down and watch a movie or read a book or go out with friends–without guilt! I put in a good day’s work, so I can afford to relax.

Am I tired at the end of the 8-hour work day? Yes. But it’s a “good tired,” the kind you feel after accomplishing a lot. I think this schedule’s going to catch on!

March 24, 2008

Day One of my new resolve to act like a Nine-to-Fiver started out with a real bang. I woke up before midnight last night with a ripping headache–probably all the Easter candy I consumed yesterday–and I was awake till after 3 a.m. Mentally, I whined and griped to myself for a while. You know the routine: Every time I try to get a lot of work done, something happens to wreck it. I won’t be able to work a full day tomorrow on such little sleep. There go my plans of sleeping well, walking early, eating my healthy oatmeal, and getting to work at 8:30.

After a while, I got mad. Then I settled down and had another aha! moment. (This is another embarrassing thing to admit, as it’s a lesson I had known in my 20s and 30s but somehow forgot in a gigantic senior moment.) I recalled the day when my children were babies and preschoolers and elementary students. I was writing and teaching from home and speaking–and enduring a lot of surgeries. I was awake in the night quite often–I sometimes got my best work done then. What I didn’t do was lie in bed and tell myself that I’d be too tired the next day to feed the children, or change diapers, or help with homework. I just did it, no matter how I felt, because I wanted to be a good parent and I loved my kids.

What had happened? I’d turned into some kind of wimp over the years after they left home.

Enough whining, I finally told myself in the middle of the night. I went back to bed, slept a couple more hours, got up at 6:15 and did my three miles at 6:45, ate my healthy oatmeal breakfast, fetched my timer and got to work. (I’m up to 83 minutes and 12 seconds right now.) And truthfully, I feel pretty good. If nothing else, I’m gonna feel great about accomplishing the writing tasks on my list for today. I’ll also lay off the chocolate and probably sleep fine tonight.

Nike really knew what they were talking about, didn’t they? Just do it!

March 19, 2008

Late last night I returned from California’s Mount Hermon Christian Writers Conference. It was everything I had hoped for, and much more. I’ll be sharing bits and pieces in the coming weeks about some things I learned or saw there. One of the keynote speakers was Jerry Jenkins, co-author of the Left Behind series. After one speech, we were each surprised with a copy of his writing book, Writing for the Soul: Instruction and Advice from an Extraordinary Writing Life. I was reading the book on the plane coming home, and the advice below struck a chord with me. (I had just spend five days listening to talks by bestselling, world famous writers. While I know we aren’t supposed to compare ourselves to others, it’s tough not to do. So this excerpt from his book was especially meaningful.)

“Don’t try to write a bestseller or be a modern-day Shakespeare. Simply write your best… If you’re committed to being the best you can be, you’ll achieve your best. If you’re halfhearted, you’ll be only that. I’m not saying that if you commit yourself 100 percent, you’ll sell a million copies, but I can promise you’ll be the best writer you can be. How bad to you want to be the best you can be?…Decide what’s important to you. You will always make the time to do what you really want to do. If your goal is to be the best you can be, you can arrive there every day.” Now that’s success!

His last statement was like a cup of cool water on a dry and thirsty day. Read it again. We can be successful every day if it’s a day we do the best we can with our writing. And if we continue to write every day, the best we can do next month or next year will be much higher than the best we can do today. Like so many things, it’s step by step. We don’t get better in our writing by giant leaps. We get better like the tortoise, not the hare: slow and steady is the pace, slow and steady wins the race.

Do you want to write better? Then commit to writing your best today…and tomorrow…and the next day. You can’t–in the end–be more successful than that. And it will have the added bonus of making your writing days a pleasure.

March 15, 2008

I usually post on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays–but I won’t be able to for a few days. I’ll be at the Mt. Hermon Christian Writers Conference March 14-18. I’m so excited to be going, and the Career Track looks wonderful. Some of the finest writers in the Christian field are on the faculty, and a large number of agents and editors will be in attendance as well. I’m sure I’ll have lots to share when I get back!

March 10, 2008

Lately everything I’ve stumbled across has been on the subject of burn-out or inability to focus. Even yesterday’s sermon was on what to do when you’re burned out from trying so hard–and how to prevent yourself from doing it again. It reminded me of a book that I am now re-reading: The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz. I may post on this subject for a while, as it seems to be the thing I consistently struggle with. I expend too much energy on unimportant activities or toxic people, and then I have less energy for my writing. The Power of Full Engagement writers explain how we have four energy quadrants. There is high energy negative (upset and yelling), low energy negative (depressed and overeating), high energy positive (writing page after page of your Great American Novel), and low energy positive (watching a favorite movie, strolling around your neighborhood).

This is one of the key concepts of the book–and I know from experience that it’s true: To be an effective energy manager, you need to spend nearly all of your time fully engaged in the high positive energy quadrant or recovering your energy by spending time doing things in the low positive energy quadrant.

What happens if you ignore this “pulse of life” between high and low positive energy? You don’t, as many people think, out-produce everyone else with your 14-hour work days and no Sundays off. You burn out instead. It’s not enough to just eliminate the negative energy expenditures. (One of the best articles on this topic recently is “Toxic Dumping” by Craig Harper.) You must also build into your life the healthy patterns of oscillation between activiy and rest. This is what lies at the heart of our capacity for “full engagement.”

What happens if you don’t build in the positive recovery time? “We can only push so hard for so long without breaking down and burning out,” say the authors. “Stress hormones that circulate chronically in our bodies may be temporarily energizing, but over time they prompt symptoms such as hyperactivitiy, aggressiveness, impatience, irritability, anger, self-absorption and insensitivity to others. Override the need for oscillation long enough and the symptoms may extend to headaches, back pain, gastrointestinal disorders, and ultimately to heart attacks and even death.” Sounds serious, doesn’t it???

I’ll be posting more on this subject in the coming days/weeks as I work on this in my own life. I hope you’ll share your own ideas for how you move out of the “low energy negative” and “high energy negative” modes into positive energy. Are you able to let go of negative thinking and turn your mind to what is good and positive and uplifting in your life? We’ll talk more about this!

March 9, 2008

I’m working on a book that I truly love, something “on spec” that may or may not ever sell. The novel resonates deeply with me. I like how it’s going–except I have bogged down about three-fourths of the way through the rough draft. I’m not sure where the block is coming from. Could be health issues lately. Could have too many writing irons in the fire, so it’s hard to focus. How can I find out?

In several places lately I’ve come across writers who suggest keeping a journal about the work as well as working on your manuscript. One such place is in Fearless Creating: a Step-by-Step Guide to Starting and Completing Your Work of Art by Eric Maisel, Ph. D. where there is an exercise on “Keeping a Working Notebook.” Here’s part of that exercise: Begin to keep a working notebook in which you monitor not only the subject matter of your work but also meta-work issues. Jot down any thoughts that reveal something about your process and your true circumstances. “Stopped working; I lost the thread.” “Phone rang; I ran to it, welcoming the distraction!” “The subject’s too painful. I feel like I’m falling apart.” “I hated what I wrote this morning–every sentence felt stupid! Couldn’t return to it in the afternoon. How can I work in the afternoon when I hate what I do in the morning?” Learning about how you work is a crucial part of your job. It is more important than getting an M.A. or an M.F.A. This is the sort of vital self-knowledge that precious few artists ever obtain.

Maisel says that learning how you work is a crucial part of your job as a writer. Do you know how you work? Do you know what helps or hinders your work? Do you know your own biorhythms and when you work best? How does your diet and exercise affect your work progress? How much sleep do you need tonight in order to write tomorrow? Which of your relationships are so toxic that they drain your writing time and/or energy? What boundaries do you need to have in place so that you can write on a regular basis?

Take some time this weekend to start a writing notebook. Keep it right alongside of your work-in-progress. Note what’s going on in your life (and daily habits) when your writing is stuck and when it really flows well. Over time, this kind of self-knowledge can be more important, as Maisel says, than getting that M.A. or M.F.A.

March 5, 2008

My friend Sherryl Clark, a much published and award-winning Australian writer, wrote about the myths and the realities of what it takes to become published. “Or,” as she says, “if you want more than that, what does it take to become a published, famous, well-paid (dare I say rich?) author? Let’s look at the myths first.” Be sure to read both posts. First come the myths, then the realities. The truth might be hard to swallow sometimes, but it’s the truth that sets one free. Read on for some valuable advice from someone who takes her own medicine–and loves to write!

“What Does It Take? The Myths”

“The Realities about What It Takes”

Newer Posts »